1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a chamber component configured to be coupled to a process chamber and a method of fabricating the chamber component.
2. Description of Related Art
The fabrication of integrated circuits (IC) in the semiconductor industry typically employs plasma to create and assist surface chemistry within a process chamber necessary to remove material from and deposit material on a substrate. In general, plasma is formed within the process chamber under vacuum conditions by heating electrons in the presence of an electric field to energies sufficient to sustain ionizing collisions with a supplied process gas. Moreover, the heated electrons can have energy sufficient to sustain dissociative collisions and, therefore, a specific set of gases under predetermined conditions (e.g., chamber pressure, gas flow rate, etc.) are chosen to produce a population of charged species and chemically reactive species suitable to the particular process being performed within the chamber (e.g., etching processes where materials are removed from the substrate or deposition processes where materials are added to the substrate).
In semiconductor manufacturing, numerous techniques exist for creating plasma including, but not limited to, capacitively coupled plasma (CCP) systems, inductively coupled plasma (ICP) systems, electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) plasma systems, helicon wave plasma systems, surface wave plasma systems, slotted plane antenna (SPA) plasma systems, etc. Plasma is formed from the interaction of the supplied process gas with electromagnetic (EM) field propagation at frequencies in the radio frequency (RF) or microwave spectrum.
Common to many of these systems, the process gas is introduced to the process chamber through a shower head gas distribution system having a plurality of gas passages formed there through. However, in the presence of electric fields, utilized for example during plasma formation, hollow cathode discharges may be triggered within these gas passages. In plasma processing, such hollow cathode discharges may lead to plasma power loss and particle generation.